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Nitroholic

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Posts posted by Nitroholic

  1. Yeah..I tried a 4WS setup on my Madforce, duplicating the servo setup I had on the front.

    Didn;t keep it for long. Made the car wander at speed unless I cranked up the servo saver and really dialled down the movement range on the rears.... and unless going slowly...it promoted over steer. Crabbing was fun....for about 5 minutes.

    Took it off and never bothered again. It didn;t need it.

     

    Makes more sense on a rock crawler, or on a slower truck.... but I was running this on 4S and a 1950 4-pole and wasn;t really bothered about going slow

    • Like 1
  2. Personally.... I'd buy neither of those options.

     

    The KM 23cc 2 bolt is a cheap motor. It's not good quality, and while it does it;s job...it's not worth spending money on. Unless it;s genuinely all you can afford, in which case piston, rings and a head kit. But if you are looking at spending cash.... buy something better.

    which is NOT a 30cc cheap motor. Thats a bigger cheap motor.

     

    Where I would spend my money would be on a much better quality motor, which will provide a decent life and performance. In terms of quality in these motors, Zenoah are probably the best of the bunch, followed by CY.

     

    For your £160, you could get this: https://www.innovative-rc.com/product_info.php?cPath=27_141_142&sort=1a&products_id=562

    This is the 4 bolt version of the motor HPI fit to stock Bajas.

    If you want to stick with RC Modelz choice of engines.... then save up a bit more and get this one https://www.rcmodelz.co.uk/engines/complete-engines/zenoah-g270rc-car-engine-4-bolt.html

     

    I've run a variety of motors in my time, and you really can see where the costs are cut to sell an engine that looks similar for nearly £100 less and still make a profit.

  3. Kyosho USA 1 is basically still running the old Madforce axles. I have had a Madforce Kruiser for... a long time.

     

    Love the old thing.

     

    Converted it to brushless, and run it on 4S. But I do have some alloy axles in place of the stock plastic ones. Don;t think those are still made... but if anyone does start making them, it is worth the money.

    Handling was bouncy, and a bit quirky...but it is fun. Modded the steering to mount the servo on the front axle...braced the suspension arms and its good.

     

    Tempted to convert it back to nitro just for ****s and giggles.

    • Like 1
  4. No...thats the 4x4 Mega version. That comes with a brushed motor and ESC and a NiMh battery. The full beans version comes with brushless and a £400 price tag.

     

    You could buy the brushed version and upgrade later though.  Depends if they reduced the spec anywhere else. If you look at the total cost after upgrade, you wont save any cash, but it does mean you can spread the cost. Of course, if you already have suitable batteries etc. that helps too.

  5. Looking at the kit you got, I would say any motor over abouit 3600KV would be likely to just eat the diffs, assuming you can get it geared well enough to run nicely.  A 4-pole lower KV motor will give more torque and smoother low speed running, which is what a rock crawler like this needs. The motor you have is more suited to running flat out on smoother surfaces in something like a stadium truck....and if you run this like that...it will spend a lot of time on its roof.  Or broken.

     

    I get you want speed .... but....you bought a truck with a high centre of gravity, soft long travel suspension, and a diff setup intended to crawl.  You also need to look at how you are going to gear this. Tamiyas are notorious for having limited adjustment on the motors to mesh the gears properly. This limits the pinion/spur gear ranges you can fit. As stock, its on a brushed motor with NiMh battery.  A 5400Kv motor will need massively different gearing. I assume your mates are running similar trucks... so check what gearing/motors they are running. Otherwise you have a good chance of finding out the hard way what happens when you get the gearing very wrong on a brushless truck. I'll give you a clue..... it involves smoke, flames, and the smell of burning plastic. Last ESC I had fail like that got hot enough to melt the big fat power wires off their soldered connections.

     

    The ESC however, is fine as long as you do get it geared properly.

    • Like 3
  6. Could just have been old fuel residue clogging up the carb. If fuel was left in, the petrol evaporates leaviong the oil residue from the premix behind.

    You maybe got enough fuel through it to wash out whatever was there....and brrrrm!

     

    Now it's running ... it should be easier to keep it running. Especially now it;s had a proper going over!

     

    Hopefully now you can get the payback for your efforts and enjoy some playtime 🙂

    • Like 1
  7. Can be frustrating.

     

    I'm 55, been messing with engines since I was 12, and I still find ways to get confused 

     

    Usually, it's down to an assumption I made, or a part I ruled out as being the cause without actually checking. 

     

    If you haven't had the head off, do that next. Get a new base gasket before putting it back though. No silicon or other instant gasket. Will give you a good idea of the engines condition and likely amount of use. 

     

    Is it a 2 bolt or 4 bolt motor? I had a few 2 bolt heads crack. One OBR ported head split clean through from the base to the exhaust bolt holes. Crack ran along a fin base and was very hard to see from outside. Blindingly obvious from inside....

    • Like 2
  8. Really, if you are going to use a drag brake for an onroad car, where the surfaces are pretty grippy... then it would be well worth getting a slightly better ESC that lets you control the level of braking you get.

    Having the brakes apply full on when you throttle off is going to make things a little jittery.

     

    I understand what you are trying to achieve, and thats basically just slowing the car into corners when you let off the gas. If you don't 'coast' but rather drive to the point you want to brake, brake....turn and get on the gas again.... being able to tune that braking is going to be something that will improve the experience.

  9. Back to first principles..... motor needs 3 things to run. Fuel, spark and compression.

     

    1) Fuel. You know you got fuel going in....but.... Check what carb you have. There are decent carbs ( Walbro) and some really quite nasty clone carbs that used to get shipped on some of the clone motors. They also had different baseline settings..not the usual ones you will find quoted everywhere. That would give you all sorts of issues. Also check the choke....and your starting procedure. Prime until the bulb is full and fuel is moving, choke on....pull a few times until it coughs...then choke off, and pull. Should fire right up.

     

    2) Spark. It's possible you have a bad plug. Worth getting a replacement from a REPUTABLE supplier, as there are many cheap and rubbish copies on E-Bay. A bad plug may spark nicely when you test it out of the cylinder, but break down under load. Also check the plug lead is in good order, and the coil gap should be about hte thickness of a piece of thin card ( It was one good use of those taxi phone number cards I used to get through the letterbox before Uber was a thing)

     

    3) Compression. Trickier to measure....but if you take the plug out and put through thumb over the motor, you should feel a decent amount of compression pushing your thumb off the plughole when you pull the pullstarter. If you don't you could have a blown base gasket, worn ring or worn out barrel. These are plated with no proper liner, so when the plating wears, you lose tolerance very rapidly and the compression goes. If you see any scoring or marking in the plating, this is not a good sign. The base gasket between the crankcases is also very thin around hte transfer ports. This can blow out, tear or otherwise fail...meaing your compression drops and your motor sucks fresh air in rather than fuel mix.

     

    These are fairly basic 2 stroke motors, but they can be fussy. Once you get to the bottom of hte issue, though, it should start easily every time. You just have to keep going until you find out what's wrong!

     

    • Thanks 1
  10. fail safe is going to come with all the radio sets these days. No reason not to include it.

     

    I'd look at something like the Futaba 3PV .... It's £121 , but when you look at hte specs, you get a lot of features and spec. The flip side is receivers are nearly £40 each, so if you plan on building a collection with a lot of cars....you will eaither need to keep swapping the receiver around, or bite the bullet to buy more.

    • Thanks 1
  11. Yeah .... upgrading is a potential minefield if you are not careful.

     

    Most 'strengthening' upgraders add weight. Weight saps hte performance...so you increase the power and fit a faster motor...which then eats the transmission.

     

    Sometimes, an easy path to upgrade exists. Like, for example, where the manufacturer makes a brushless and a brushed version, and you got the brushed one.  Then you can upgrade the car with parts. Often, though, the options are more limited.

    In this case, you have started off with an entry level truck, enjoyed it ... but got to the point where you want more.

    • Like 1
  12. Yeah... I had one from new, and it was so stable and forgiving. Decided to get back into helis....and there isn't anything comparable out there that I could find.

     

    So..I got one for £25 in flying order, picked up a broken one for parts for £8 ( had snapped the flybar, and had one slow servo) and then a pair came up for £25. Untested....but looked in good order. As a bonus....one was the basic yellow....the other was the S300 version, with different skids, body and tail. The base model seems to fly fine...but the S300 wouldn't trim to a hover, and when I checked the swash I had no fore/aft control. Servo is dead. But I have enough spares to make 2 good flyers and still have skids, blades, tails, etc as spares. Total outlay is under £60.....and I have seen plenty asking more for one good model. 

     

    And some tinkering fun to be had. Working with tiny screws through a magnifier on a tray to catch the things if one bounces!

  13. Today...we attempted micro surgery....

    Picked up a couple of cheap E-Flite MCX helis to play with. One seems fine, but the other has a failed servo. Have another chassis with parts for spares, so trying to tear down the thing to swap over parts.

    My old eyes are not liking the tiny tiny screws!!

     

    Still....will be good if it works. If it doesn;t.... then the MCX S300 parts on it are going on the stock MCX

    • Like 1
  14. I would recommend a variety of radios, depending on budget....and how many seperate vehicles you might end up owning to use with the same transmitter.

     

    'Budget' brands like Dumbo RC, or FlySky work well, and don;t cost a lot of money. Receivers are cheap, so its easy to have multiple models bound to the one transmitter.

     

    Higher quality radio kit from...say Sanwa or Futaba...has better response and feels nicer in the hand. Plus you usually get more things to tune the setup, and that might be something you enjoy.

     

    Like I say, depends what you want and what you want to spend

    • Thanks 1
  15. Yes you can ..... In RC t erms, pretty much anything can be done.  I built a 6WD Hyper 7 last summer for fun. I have a twin engined Savage, my Firestorm has a mid mounted brushless motor.

     

    What mods? ALL of them.

     

    You will have to make your own engine mounts, find room for the motor, sort out gearing, find space for the fuel tank you will need (bigger than the stock one for sure ) and then find out how long hte diff and driveshafts will last.

    Will you get a good result? Will it be driveable, will it break all the time?  Depends on your fabrications skills and what parts you can add.

    Fitting smaller big block motors have been done, but I have not seen anything as large as a 5.9 put in.

  16. Dream 50R .... nice little retro.

     

    Captures the look of the old race bikes nicely.

     

    @everclear1984 ..reminds me of swapping plugs on an SV1000S. The front plug you can see but not remove...until the rad, oil cooler and lines are out of the way. And thats the easy one. Part of the reason I loved my 900 Hornet so much was the fact that ALL the routine maintenance jobs were easy.

    • Like 1
  17. Basically....you can;t really do this with a single servo....

     

    If I wanted to set up something like this, I would simply double up the servo and use a second rod to pull the brake.

    You would need to make up a new actuating arm for the brake, and find a place to mount a second servo. Then just operate that servo on the third channel alone. Most third channel functions are 'on/off' not propertional, so you will have no brake ...or all the brake you are going to get ... so make sure you can adjust the brake force physically with the actuating mechanism.

     

    But, yes. It should certainly be possible

    • Thanks 1
  18. Starter box is basically a motor with a rubber wheel that contacts the cars engine flywheel when you press the car onto it. A contact switch starts the motor, which spins the flywheel turning the motor over until it fires.

    You will often find the starter box has a glow plug igniter wire that runs off it's battery too....as hte glow plug needs power when starting up.

  19. Yeah.....theory and practice are different beasts, and when I did this...I saw no improvement in anything.

    When the bearings wore out, I replaced the brace with an IRC one that was thicker and that served me just as well and was more resilient to muck and rubbish.

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